Bear with me: I had a weird thought...

[Sk8r]

The background: I laid out of reefing between 2000 and 2005, roughly, went from a no-skimmer, driptray bioball 100 with actinic and fluorescents, 50 g sump softie reef, lazy turnover; that and a 30g Penguin driven softie reef with no sump, which worked well, ,moderate in hair algae that never got bad enough to worry about.

...both of these, suddenly to a modern 54 gallon with sump, skimmer, MH lighting, and a Mag 9.5...

I first drowned in hair algae, then had amazing growth of just about everything, amazing---on the scale of that old tank.
But simplified my system on the next move and concentrated just on lps, and had killer hammer growth. Took over the whole tank. I fragged out as much as grew.

Now we don't generally choose mushrooms, gsp, ysp, kenya tree, or such---simply because they get out of hand. But we advise people with hair algae that it'll run its course. And it will, especially if you pull the excess phosphate. Bubble algae: just a phase; cyanobacteria---three day dark and skim well or water change; pineapple sponge; just a phase.

I'm wondering about going a step further to some of our other 'blooming' problems, so the hobby can advance to the point we say---'just a bloom. Wait.'
Aiptasia. Asterinas. Who knows---maybe even flatworms.
If we could use the wisdom of working marine biologists, ask about life requirements of these pests, figure what's fueling these, then do a remediation on the chemistry, that would be easier than dumping antibiotics on the problem.
Maybe we should just view some of these pests as kind of like the fuge, as uptaking something we really don't need an excess of...the trick being to figure procedures to export that excess, as in, maybe, water changes during the dieback...

Just thinking, as aforesaid. Anybody have any notions on this?

 

[behlke]

Some additional ramblings to add.

This philosophy will work, and does, in certain conditions. We already familiar with some organisms (diatoms) that will bloom and then die away during the cycling process of a new tank. I hope it will be possible to extend the practice to many other organisms instead of reaching for the bottle of antibiotics or insecticide. By allowing populations to run their course I think we will establish a better ecology within our aquaria.

Later,Adam

 

[sczlars]

In general, I agree with this, and it is pretty much how I run my tank. However, I did finally deal with my purple clove (anthelia) problem, and dosed the tank with fluke tabs to get rid of them. They really would have taken over every bare, lighted spot, and were already keeping some things that I want from growing. So.. a balancing act. The last 6 months I've been getting more vermetid snails, and last month these cute little sponges started popping up . Mostly I watch and wait to see what happens. Asterinas, yup. Small red flatworms, yes, bristle worms, sure, along with lots of amphipods and small, clear, ball-tip anemones and who knows what else.

--Lars

 

[billdogg]

I refuse to "dose" my tank with anything other than Ca, Alk, and Mg. Don't get me wrong - I have been through every "plague" there is over the years. IMHO, manual removal is the best and most effective treatment for most things of this nature (aiptasia, bryopsis, hydroids, hair algea), even if it entails taking each and every rock out of the tank and scrubbing them clean one by one. Other problems (bristle worms, diatoms, cyano) are self limiting and will find there own solutions if you can give them time to do so.

Dumping toxic chemicals into your system to "cure" it is just inviting other problems. Mother Nature has been dealing with all of these things for a lot longer than any of us and seems to do a pretty good job when given the chance.

 

[sczlars]

I hear you billdogg.. but that just wasn't about to happen with the cloves.. I got rid of the problem with very minimal disruption to the other creatures in the tank. A teardown would have been *very* ugly. Bryopsis, check. Hair algae, yup. Hydroids, check. (they eventually go away) Like I said, a balancing act, weighing one's options. (see thread on this forum re: fluke tabs solved my clove problem) --Lars.

 

[rwb500]

the problem is that many of these pests are not just going to disappear. Aiptasia have very few predators in an aquarium and they have basically the same water quality requirements as corals. There is nothing that is going to cause them to die off that would not be bad for your corals.

its not like algae where you just need to reduce nutrients to the point where natural predation can keep up with growth.

 

[tmz]

Some things will run their course but sometimes they run over other things that you want to thrive along the way. I think patience and manual removal are very god first steps.

 

[billsreef]

When you start up a tank, there is definitely a progression of blooms...some of which will die out as other life takes over. The same thing happens on fresh surface on the reef, such as the progression of life on a freshly sunk ship turned artificial reef. There are some organisms that excel in a fresh clean surface like, mostly fast growing stuff. After awhile other, generally slower growing, and more domineering species take hold and push out the pioneering species. It's an old ecological story that is repeated on every environment on the planet. For some stuff, yes, just time and maturation will do the trick, for others higher on the scale of ecological succession, not so much.

For years I had a couple of Majano and Aiptasia that just never spread or grew out of control. Just the same couple of "pest" anemones in the same holes that gave me no problems. Then my Pygmy Angel died of old age. That story rapidly changed as those pests no longer had the biological control of the angel constantly picking at them and keeping them under control.

 

[LouH]

I had Bryopsis so bad years ago that it took 3 complete tank breakdowns and manual rock scrubbing to make it go away. Pulling out handfulls of this algae combined with agressive water changes didn't do it. I had to scrub the rocks until there were no traces of algae. It was at that time that I started running GFO. The Bryopsis never returned. It would have taken years for this infestation to resolve itself withoug taking extreme measures.

 

[Sanren]

rather than dosing with whatever chemical, taking the rock out and hitting the problem areas with a blow torch has worked well for me.

 

[LouH]

rather than dosing with whatever chemical, taking the rock out and hitting the problem areas with a blow torch has worked well for me.

A blow torch literally?

 

[gone fishin]

I have used the blow torch method for aiptasia and bryopsis. Generally I will try to let the nature of the tank limit the growth of things. But some things like the above mentioned can overrun a tank before that equilibrium state is reached.

 

[Sanren]

propane torch, you just gota be careful, if you overdo it the rock can actually explode.
my first tank, before i knew anything of what i was doing, i had this cool looking thing on a rock.....didn't know what it was, but it was something alive. I thought it was a coral polyp.....so i babied the thing.....about 3 months later, that cool little polyp was EVERYWHERE and i didn't know what to do. So i joined Reef Central and started doing research. That cool little polyp was something called aiptasia and there wasn't a sq inch of rock that wasn't covered in it. at that point i only had rock and 2 3 stripe damsels, so out the rock came and out came the blow torch. Had a friend helping me and he kind of over cooked one of the rocks that apparently had some water trapped inside of it. next thing we know there is a loud crack and that 1 rock was now about 20 and in a 4 ft radius of where we were. After some laughing and cleaning of soiled pants, we learned our lesson and only cooked the pests rather than trying to melt the rock....